Cleveland, Ohio has pledged to reform police training after an incident involving antisemitic social media posts by an officer before he was hired.
The city will now require all officers to complete implicit bias training and enforce social media background checks on new hires after they were unable to punish an officer for his antisemitic posts, the Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Police Chief Wayne Drummond issued a joint statement expressing frustration that the officer would be face criminal charges or internal disciplinary proceedings for statements made before he was hired in 2018.
Going forward, they are putting in place procedures to “address and identify officers’ biases before they’re hired,” the report said.
The city said they were unable to punish the officer because his comments were made before he was hired and did not come under social media monitoring, which the city had not implemented before 2018.
The new policies will include behavioral-based interviews, social media monitoring, implicit and explicit bias training and mandatory cultural competency training for all public safety division employees.
The training programs will be done by the city in partnership with the ADL.
All public safety employees will be mandated to complete the training by the end of 2023.